Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-wxvwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T17:06:15.520Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Testimony of the Russian ‘Archbishop’ Peter Concerning theMongols (1244/5): Precious Intelligence or Timely Disinformation? 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

PETER JACKSON
PETER JACKSON*
Affiliation:
Keele University p.jackson@keele.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The first decade of the 21st century proved remarkably fertile in yieldingup manuscripts relevant to the earliest direct contacts between Latin Europeand the Mongol empire – namely, those framed by the devastation of Rus´(1237-40), Poland, Moravia and Hungary (1241-2) by the Mongols (or‘Tartars’) and the subsequent despatch to the Mongol world of three partiesof friars (1245-7) as envoys of Pope Innocent IV. These texts include:- (1)an early manuscript of the Epistula de vita secta et origine Tartarorum of the Hungarian Dominican Julian, who travelled tothe Ural region in 1236–7 in search of the Hungarians’ pagan kinsmen in whatwas known as ‘Greater Hungary’, and returned with news of the imminentMongol assault on Rus´; (2) two hitherto unknown letters from the Nestorianmonk Simeon Rabban-ata to the Emperor Frederick II and King Louis IX ofFrance, brought back from Azerbaijan in 1247 by one of Innocent IV's envoys,the Dominican André de Longjumeau; and (3) a second copy of the so-called‘Tartar Relation’, an account produced in Poland in mid July 1247 by aFranciscan friar calling himself ‘C. de Bridia’ and closely linked with themost celebrated of the papal embassies to the Mongols, which was led by theFranciscan John of Plano Carpini and travelled across the Eurasian steppesas far as the court of the Qaghan Güyük in Mongolia.

Information

Type
Part II: The Mongol World
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016, pp. 65 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

The first decade of the 21st century proved remarkably fertile in yielding up manuscripts relevant to the earliest direct contacts between Latin Europe and the Mongol empire – namely, those framed by the devastation of Rus´ (1237-40), Poland, Moravia and Hungary (1241-2) by the Mongols (or ‘Tartars’) and the subsequent despatch to the Mongol world of three parties of friars (1245-7) as envoys of Pope Innocent IV.Footnote 2 These texts include:- (1) an early manuscript of the Epistula de vita secta et origine Tartarorum of the Hungarian Dominican Julian, who travelled to the Ural region in 1236–7 in search of the Hungarians’ pagan kinsmen in what was known as ‘Greater Hungary’, and returned with news of the imminent Mongol assault on Rus´;Footnote 3 (2) two hitherto unknown letters from the Nestorian monk Simeon Rabban-ata to the Emperor Frederick II and King Louis IX of France, brought back from Azerbaijan in 1247 by one of Innocent IV's envoys, the Dominican André de Longjumeau;Footnote 4 and (3) a second copy of the so-called ‘Tartar Relation’, an account produced in Poland in mid July 1247 by a Franciscan friar calling himself ‘C. de Bridia’ and closely linked with the most celebrated of the papal embassies to the Mongols, which was led by the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini and travelled across the Eurasian steppes as far as the court of the Qaghan Güyük in Mongolia.Footnote 5

The Tractatus de ortu Tartarorum and associated texts

The present paper was sparked off by the most recent discovery of all, a codex auctioned by Sotheby's on 3 December 2008. Purchased by a private dealer, it was auctioned again in March 2010 and is now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (Acc. 2011/5). Believed to have originated from the Augustinian priory of Breamore in Hampshire, the codex later passed into the possession of the Earls of Devon, for which reason it has become known as the ‘Courtenay Compendium’.Footnote 6 It incorporates a wide range of texts, including Gildas’ De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, the Gesta Francorum, the De Machometo of William of Tripoli and a miscellaneous body of prophetic material. Some of the texts are particularly germane to Mongol Asia: Pipino's early 14th-century Latin redaction of Marco Polo's book; the De ritibus orientalium regionum of the Franciscan Odoric of Pordenone (also of the 14th century); and the Tractatus de ortu Tartarorum (“Treatise on the Rise of the Tartars”), with which I am concerned here.Footnote 7

The Tractatus comprises the responses of a Russian cleric named Peter to questions posed by Innocent IV and the Cardinals, in advance of the first Council of Lyons (1245) and hence available to the Curia prior to the Pope's despatch of Carpini and other envoys to the Mongols.Footnote 8 Like Julian's Epistula, it was published in 1956 by Heinrich Dörrie, who reproduced in parallel the only two texts known at that time. Of these, one is found in the unique manuscript of the Burton annals, Cotton Vespasian E.iii (fo. 29r-v), which was edited by Luard in the Rolls Series and extracts from which were published by R. Pauli in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores; while the second was taken from the Chronica Majora of the English Benedictine Matthew Paris.Footnote 9 It seems to have gone unnoticed that the text of the Burton annals presented by Dörrie inadvertently omits a number of phrases.Footnote 10 Dörrie was also unaware of two other versions of the Tractatus: in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, ms. 162/83 (where the text of Peter's Tractatus, at fo. 106r-v, is very close indeed to that found in the Burton annals and which contains a range of texts remarkably similar to that in the Courtenay Compendium);Footnote 11 and in Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek (formerly the Studienbibliothek), Linz, ms. 446, fol. 267vb.Footnote 12 The Linz text of the Tractatus presents some important variants, as we shall see. In this paper the following sigla will be used:-

Currently in existence, then, are four manuscript copies of the Tractatus, not counting the version supplied by Matthew Paris, who seems to have reworked the text in order (a) to insert material of a purely exegetical nature, (b) to provide additional commentary from his own store of knowledge and (c) to throw into sharper relief the gruesome character of the invaders.Footnote 13 The version found in C does not add anything of significance to the document itself. But here the Tractatus (pp. 315a-316b) is followed by two other texts, the latter of which ends (p. 318b), confusingly, Explicit tractatus de ortu Tartarorum secundum Petrum archiepiscopum de Russia, as if they formed an integral part of his report; and that is how they were represented in Sotheby's schedule of the manuscript's contents. It is worth noting that in both G and C all three documents follow one another in the same order and that, in his catalogue of the manuscripts of Gonville and Caius College Library, Montague Rhodes James was likewise misled into assuming that they all formed part of Peter's report.

In reality these latter two pieces are completely independent of the Tractatus. The first (C, pp. 316b-317b; G, fos. 106v-107v), headed Anno domini millessimo ccmo xliv transmissa est haec prelato parisius de adventu Tartarorum (“In the year of the Lord 1244 this [letter] concerning the advent of the Tartars was sent to the bishop in Paris”), is a letter from a Hungarian bishop concerning his interrogation of two Mongol prisoners. It has long been known through its incorporation both in the Waverley annals and (in a slightly different version) in Matthew Paris's Additamenta to the Chronica Majora.Footnote 14 The second document (C, pp. 317b-318b; G, fos. 107v-108v) is Nova pestis contra ecclesiam (“A Fresh Affliction Confronting the Church”), which similarly proves to be a letter that has been accessible for some decades. In the version published by Robert Davidsohn in 1927 (from a manuscript in private possession in Florence), it purports to be addressed to the Pope by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and to have been forwarded to the Bishop of Constance by the papal legate in Germany.Footnote 15 Such indications regarding provenance and transmission are lacking in C and G, which furnish a slightly different text of the work from Davidsohn's; but this document could well itself date from 1244, since the Mongols are said to be already at “our borders” and menacing Latin Christians, which fits best with the brief Mongol incursion into northern Syria in that year. Davidsohn, regrettably, did not undertake an analysis of the letter; but it has been discussed by both Jean Richard and Pierre-Vincent Claverie, who each published a much shorter version of this text from the ms. lat. 4794 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.Footnote 16 Some of the details found in the Patriarch's letter will surface in the discussion that follows.

Archbishop Peter and his background

Let us now turn to Archbishop Peter, a highly obscure figure who is unheard-of prior to his appearance in Western Europe, possibly as early as the final months of 1244.Footnote 17 The identification with a known cleric named Peter Akherovich, from the monastery of the Holy Saviour at Berestovo,Footnote 18 has now been discarded. Opinions concerning the Archbishop's identity, and even the genuineness of his episcopal rank, have varied sharply.Footnote 19 But whereas the other versions (including that of Matthew Paris) call him simply archiepiscopus Russiae, L describes him as archiepiscopus de Belgrab. As Ruotsala proposes, he was therefore very probably the bishop of Belgorod, some twenty miles from Kiev – in which case the fact that the bishop had from an early date served as the suffragan to the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus´ would perhaps explain Peter's seemingly gratuitous promotion in Western sources.Footnote 20

We can be certain that Innocent IV and the Cardinals were keen to interrogate their visitor regarding the nature and strength of this formidable new enemy on Christendom's eastern frontier. Of Peter's answers to the questions put to him at Lyons, his account of the Mongols’ origins constitutes the longest. It falls squarely within a well-established Russian perception of the antecedents of the peoples of the western steppe, relying heavily as it does on the late 7th-century apocalyptic prophecy that was misattributed to the 4th-century prelate Methodius of Patara. According to the Sermo (or Revelationes) of ‘Pseudo-Methodius’, a barbarous people called the Ishmaelites had attacked the Children of Israel, only to be defeated and repulsed by Gideon; in this fashion the Sermo identified them with the Midianites of the Old Testament (Judges, vi-vii). They would return in the final phase of world history, emerging from the wilderness of ‘Ethrib’, and would overrun the world like locusts, ravaging it mercilessly for seven ‘weeks of years’, i.e. for a total of forty-nine years.Footnote 21 For Pseudo-Methodius that phase had already begun, and the cataclysm to which he was referring was the Muslim Arab conquest of the Near East; ‘Ethrib’ represents Yathrib, the previous name of the Arabian city of Medina. But later generations, quite unaware that his prophecy had been fulfilled in the author's own day, appealed to his work with relative frequency in the High Middle Ages. It was translated into Latin and reproduced in abridged form in the 12th century within that indispensable digest of Christian history and theology, the Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor.

Now Rus´ bookmen had invoked the Sermo since the late 11th century, when confronted by the Polovtsy/Cumans/Qipchāq, the Mongols’ immediate precursors on the Pontic-Caspian steppe;Footnote 22 and they again resorted to it from the time of the Mongols’ own first appearance in the south in 1222.Footnote 23 It is evidently to this tradition that the Hungarian Dominican Julian alluded when, in the course of his return journey to Hungary after halting for some time in the Russian principality of Suzdal´, he claimed that “the Ishmaelites too nowadays wish to be called Tartars” (unde et Ysmahelite volunt nunc Tartari vocari).Footnote 24 What this must mean is that the designation ‘Tatar’ had now to be applied to the nomadic populations of the steppe in general.Footnote 25 On the authority of “a certain Rus´ cleric” (quidam clericus ruthenorum), Julian further equated the Tartars with the Midianites who had been vanquished by Gideon.Footnote 26 The identification of the Mongols with the barbarian peoples whose advent had been foretold by Pseudo-Methodius would also be widespread within educated circles in Latin Europe following the invasion of 1241.Footnote 27

Peter in turn incorporated material from Pseudo-Methodius when describing the Mongols’ origins at the very beginning of his Tractatus. They are descended, he says, from the remnants of the Midianites who, in the wake of Gideon's victory, had taken flight and had made for the wilderness of ‘Etrev’ (i.e. Ethrib) in the furthest parts of the east. Methodian influence is also evident in his claim that the Mongols believed they would mount a bitter struggle against the Romans (dicunt etiam continuum congressum se habere cum Romanis et aliis Latinis), since according to the Sermo the Ishmaelites would finally be vanquished by the King of the Romans.Footnote 28

Down to their emergence from the wilderness of ‘Etrev’, Peter's account of the Mongols’ rise corresponds to the details brought back by Julian, from which, however, he departs thereafter, introducing fresh material on ‘Chir Chan’ or ‘Cirkan’ (in L; corrupted beyond recognition in C and G, but clearly Chinggis Khan), who was supposedly descended from one of the Midianites’ twelve rulers, ‘Tatar Kan’, and who had led them out of this wilderness when provoked by ‘Curzeusa’, the ruler of a great city called ‘Ornac’. Here, evidently, we have a corruption of Curzemsa or some similar form, i.e. the Khwārazmshāh; ‘Ornac’ is his capital, Ürgench.Footnote 29

Rus´ had thus established itself as the principal source of intelligence on the Mongols even prior to the departure of Pope Innocent IV's envoys in March 1245. Peter's Tractatus and, in lesser measure, Julian's earlier report, based on testimony from Rus´ informants, would together provide a recent and apparently reliable point of reference for Carpini and his party as they headed eastwards through the Pontic steppe. It has been suggested that Carpini framed the thematic chapters of his own Ystoria Mongalorum around the questions previously put to Peter.Footnote 30 Be that as it may, those who provided Carpini with further material, in the course of his journey through Mongol territory and at the headquarters of the Great Khan (Qaghan), were also overwhelmingly from among the Rus´: clerics, or members of princely entourages, or captives who had been enslaved by the MongolsFootnote 31 – a circumstance that would only accentuate this pronounced slant of his report.

Ms. L in comparison with the already known versions

Before we examine Peter's responses at the papal Curia more closely, it will be as well to notice some significant differences between L and the published text. Apart from the omission in L of Peter's answer to the question about Mongol religious practice, Ruotsala highlights two:Footnote 32

  1. (1) L contains the statement that the Tartars have learned that the Pope is the supreme leader in the world and are very eager to visit him (intellexerunt etiam papam esse maiorem de mundo et omnibus modis volunt eum visitare). I shall return to this extraordinary allegation later.

  2. (2) Whereas all the other variants claim that the Tartars will harry the world for 39 years, L alone has 49 (per quinquaginta [annos omitted] uno minus). This is far more likely to be the correct reading of the original, since it harmonizes with the duration of the Ishmaelites’ future sway predicted by Pseudo-Methodius,Footnote 33 from whom Peter had ultimately borrowed his historical context for the Mongol invasion.

Yet another important difference, however, is (3) that L alone makes it expressly clear how Peter has acquired his information on the contemporary Mongols (as opposed to his Methodian matrix for their origins). Towards the end of all five existing texts of the report, mention is made of a son-in-law of Chinggis Khan named ‘Chalaladan’ (the spelling varies), who had allegedly been caught out in a falsehood and exiled to Russia. But where the phrasing of the other texts is evidently incomplete and confused at this juncture, L is fuller and more coherent: “The said archbishop was told these things, and many others, by a certain Tartar grandee named Chalaladan whose wife was Chirkan's daughter” (Hec et multa alia narravit dicto archiepiscopo quidam magnus de tartaris nomine Chalaladan qui filiam Cirkan habuit in uxorem), so that this figure emerges unequivocally as Peter's source. This variant reading in L also makes sense of the final statement found only in B, C and G, “He gave him no further information regarding the doings of the Tartars” (super factis tartarorum eum plenius non instruxit), since otherwise those three mss. make it far from obvious who is informing whom.

‘Chalaladan’ and his information

The identity of this Mongol notable is regrettably even more problematic than Peter's own. Whatever Mongolian name (Jalayirdai?) lies behind the spellings in the different versions is unrecognisable. Nor is there trace of anyone who could possibly fill this role in the account of Chinggis Khan's five daughters by his chief wife Börte, as listed in the history of the Mongols composed in c.1303-4 by the Persian historian Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh al-Hamadānī.Footnote 34 But it should be noticed that at this point Rashīd al-Dīn fails to name the conqueror's daughters by lesser wives or their husbands (though he does occasionally refer to such a daughter in the first section of his work, comprising a survey of the various steppe and forest tribes incorporated in the Mongols’ ranks).Footnote 35 The notion, however, that a Mongol commander had defected and taken refuge with the enemy is indeed met with elsewhere. One of the Khwārazmshāh Muḥammad's commanders at Bukhārā was rumoured to have deserted Chinggis Khan at an earlier date;Footnote 36 while following a fruitless campaign in the Panjāb in pursuit of Muḥammad's son Jalāl al-Dīn (d. 1231), the general Dörbei is alleged to have entered Jalāl al-Dīn's own service and to have converted to Islam.Footnote 37

It is not inconceivable, then, that ‘Chalaladan’ was an exile, as he appears in Peter's report – a high-ranking figure excluded for ever from the flourishing and profitable family business of making the yeke Mongghol ulus, the dominions of the ‘Great Mongol People’, coterminous with the known world. And yet there is another possibility: that he was merely masquerading as an exile in order to spy or to sow misinformation regarding Mongol strength in those regions that remained unsubjugated – a tactic at which the Mongols were adept and which they had employed at the time of Chinggis Khan's great seven-year campaign into Western Asia.Footnote 38 Let us re-examine Peter's answers to the questions put to him at Lyons (the citations that follow are from ms. L unless otherwise specified).

Dörrie pointed to the contrast between those answers and the panic-stricken and doom-laden letters sent from Eastern Europe in 1241–2, some of which found their way into Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora.Footnote 39 For Bezzola, the Tractatus signals a fresh phase in Western intelligence on the Mongols, when the newcomers ceased to be depicted merely as instruments of divine vengeance and as the subject of apocalyptic prediction and began to appear in objective factual terms as human beings.Footnote 40 True this may be; but Peter's responses were by no means uniformly encouraging. If we discount the home-grown framework lifted from Pseudo-Methodius, the fragmentary remarks about the Mongols’ early history and the few observations about their diet and cultic practices, the statements in the Tractatus fall into two clearly distinct categories: material of a reassuring nature that might induce the West to enter into diplomatic relations with the newcomers, and information regarding Mongol strength that might have been calculated, conversely, to overawe and to intimidate.

In the former category, we have already noticed the bland statement about the Pope's status and the Mongols’ desire to see him. This admittedly finds a vague parallel, interestingly enough, in the Tartar Relation, where we read that the Tartars call the pontiff the ‘Great Pope’ throughout the West; he was addressed by this title in the ultimatum that Carpini brought back from the Qaghan Güyük in 1247.Footnote 41 And in 1262 the Mongol Ilkhan Hülegü, writing to Louis IX of France, would assure him that the Mongols had at one time believed the Pope to be the chief prince or emperor among the Franks, but that they had now realised he was instead a holy man who prayed to God unceasingly and acted as the vicegerent on earth of the Messiah.Footnote 42 Yet all this material relates only to the Pope's status within the Frankish world; and as it stands, Peter's assertion, imputing to the Mongols a view of the Pope as superior to all other men on earth, is not so much incongruous as ludicrous. The Mongols cannot possibly have seen him in this light. When the papal envoy Ascelin used almost precisely the same phrase in outlining the doctrine of papal primacy at Baiju's headquarters in Armenia in 1247, his interlocutors responded with furious invective.Footnote 43

Peter described the Mongols as punishing severely murder, theft, lying and adultery, and further passed on the cheering information that they claimed to have St. John the Baptist as their leader – a detail that curiously echoes two earlier statements in other sources. According to the Italian chronicler Riccardo di San Germano, they were transporting the body of St. Thomas,Footnote 44 while in the Patriarch of Jerusalem's letter they were said to carry Christ with them in a wagon; this figure held a Liber executionis novi [nobilis in C and G] testamenti (“Book of the fulfilment of the New [or “Noble”] “Testament”), copies of which were given to every envoy who visited the invaders.Footnote 45 The confusion here doubtless arose because a felt image (ongghon) of Chinggis Khan, before which foreign envoys were required to bow, was housed in a wagon in front of the Qaghan's tent, and because Mongol ultimatums opened with the phrase “In the power of Heaven”.Footnote 46

Asked whether the Mongols observed treaties, Peter replied that they did so, at least with those who yielded of their own free will, although they took from them warriors and artisans and exacted other services (satis observant federa quantum ad eos qui se eis sponte tradunt; accipiunt tamen ab eis bellatores et artifices et alias servitutes). How did they treat envoys? They received them favourably, replied Peter, dealing expeditiously with their business before sending them back (benigne recipiunt expediunt et remittunt).

So much, then, for information that fostered a positive and encouraging view of the Mongols. In the second category belong statements that leave no doubt, on the other hand, as to their power and their ambitions. Asked about their strength, Peter first asserted that individually they were stronger and fitter than Westerners (fortiores nobis sunt et agiliores); he later reinforced this impression by mentioning that they rested in the open air as if heedless of the harsh climate. When interrogated about their numbers, he could give no definite answer. But they had been joined, he said, by peoples from every nation and from all religious sects (de omnibus nationibus et universis sectis sunt eis populi aggregati); their forces, too, were operating on three fronts, against the Egyptians, the Turks (of Anatolia?) and against the Hungarians and Poles, and were due to rendezvous in Syria (an impressive if far from accurate summary).Footnote 47 Their women rode, fought and fired arrows just as the menfolk did (mulieres eorum more masculorum equitant et militant et sagittant). They were formidable archers. Their armour, moreover, was made of protective layers of leather and scarcely penetrable (arma habent de corio multiplici ad muniendum se et vix penetrabilia). So too they had many kinds of siege engines, which fired with great accuracy (machinas habent multiplices et certissime iacientes). Their aim was the conquest of the world (volunt sibi totum mundum subiugare). And in his otherwise heartening response to the question about their observance of treaties, Peter ended with the somewhat sinister rider that they on no account spared those who waited to be attacked (nullatenus parcentes eis qui eorum insultus expectant).

One final indication that the supposed Mongol refugee may have been spreading tendentious intelligence is Peter's response to the question how the Mongols crossed rivers and seas. He begins by saying that they traversed rivers on horseback. All the manuscripts apart from L then add the statement that the Mongols were preparing ships in three different coastal locations (in tribus locis parant navigia super mare). We have no corroborating evidence whatsoever for this from other sources, with the single exception of the Patriarch's letter (likewise found in C and G, of course), where we learn that the Mongols, in their small but cunningly constructed vessels, were able to glide over the sea like birds.Footnote 48 Now certainly Chinggis Khan's grandson Qubilai would employ naval power, in the form of Chinese craft manned by Chinese and Korean mariners, for the final Mongol assault upon the Sung empire in the 1270s and for his disastrous attacks on Japan and Java.Footnote 49 But it is difficult to see how the conquerors would have had access to ships some three decades earlier, since they had yet to reduce any power possessed of a navy. The claim looks suspiciously like ‘planted’ intelligence, designed to make the Mongol threat appear still more immediate.

The report reads, then, as if ‘Chalaladan’ had primed Peter with just the kind of material that might persuade the Latin world to despatch a diplomatic mission to the conquerors in order to forestall an inevitable and doubtless overwhelming attack. The nonsense about the Mongols’ exalted image of the Pope and about St. John the Baptist may well have been part of their known tactic of portraying themselves as sympathetic towards Christianity or at least well-disposed towards the Latins, an aspect of Mongol diplomacy to which a Western observer drew attention in 1248 and which may already have been in evidence during the first Mongol attacks on Georgia and Rus´ in 1221–2.Footnote 50 Matthew Paris furnishes other instances of this subterfuge when he reproduces a letter dating from 1242–3 and describing the information extracted from an Englishman in the Mongols’ service, who had been captured in Austria. From this anonymous figure his captors had learned of the reasons that the Mongols themselves offered for their coming with the express aim of inducing gullible rulers to make agreements with them and allow them free passage across their territories. Such explanations, which included the ostensibly religious aims of retrieving the bones of the Three Magi from Cologne and of making the pilgrimage to Santiago,Footnote 51 are strikingly reminiscent of the bizarrely improbable details given by Peter.

Otherwise, none of what Peter transmits is bogus information. It all harmonises perfectly well with what we know of the conquerors from other sources, whether the papal envoys of 1245–7 or contemporary Muslim observers. It is simply misleading information because it is incomplete. What Peter had not mentioned (and, in fairness, may not even have learned) was that the Mongols received envoys favourably for the very reason that they regarded the despatch of an embassy as the first stage in the process of submission. It was impossible to have peace with them without embarking on that process; and indeed the Turkish-Mongol word el/il (Persian īlī) signified both ‘peace’ and ‘submission’.Footnote 52

Peter's own role

And yet it would be invidious to focus exclusively on the remote and shadowy figure of ‘Chalaladan’ and to ignore his mouthpiece at Lyons. Where precisely does Peter himself fit within this context? Whatever the Mongol renegade had told him, the Russian prelate had to formulate for himself answers to the questions put to him by Pope and Cardinals: as we saw, the elements taken from Pseudo-Methodius, at least, are highly unlikely to have derived from any Mongol informant. According to Matthew Paris, Peter, driven from his province in Russia, had come west with the aim of securing aid, advice and comfort in his tribulations in the event that the Roman Church and Western princes would assist him.Footnote 53 If Mongol commanders who went over to the enemy were thin on the ground, people who abandoned their homes and fled before the Mongol armies were emphatically not.Footnote 54 Modern scholars have accordingly accepted Peter as a genuine refugee.Footnote 55 He could well have been displaced from his homeland at the time of the Mongol sack of Kiev in December 1240. But where had he been during the interval of almost four years?

Peter was a priest; and priests, like all holy men, benefited from a certain cachet in the Mongol world. The nomads valued the prayers of Christian priests and monks just as they prized those of their own traditional shamans, Buddhist priests and lamas, Taoist adepts, Muslim theologians and experts on the Sharī‛a, and the rest. In return for praying for the imperial dynasty, such religious specialists were exempted from the head tax and from military or labour service, privileges dating from the era of Chinggis Khan himself.Footnote 56 Within twenty years, on these grounds among others, the Rus´ church would throw its weight behind a policy of subservience to the ‘Tatar Yoke’, rather than pursuing collaboration and ecclesiastical union with Rome.Footnote 57

We should recall that the Mongols found a ready use for those with diverse talents.Footnote 58 This included interpreters like the anonymous Englishman whom we have already mentioned; he had been picked out by the Mongols for his knowledge of languages and had accompanied two embassies to the Hungarian King as an interpreter.Footnote 59 Moreover, the Mongols particularly valued intermediaries who could induce princes to accept their place in the world-empire founded by Chinggis Khan – like the Muslim trader Shams al-Dīn ‛Umar Qazwīnī, a dealer in precious stones who had entered the service of the Qaghan Ögödei and in 1236 brought the Seljük Sultan of Anatolia (Rūm), Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw II, a Mongol ultimatum. Qazwīnī prevailed upon the Sultan to accept the Mongols’ overlordship on the totally spurious grounds that their yoke was an easy one to bear. Submission (īlī), he said, involved nothing more than the yearly despatch of garments, horses and gold in small quantities.Footnote 60 None of this could have prepared the Seljüks for the sudden onslaught of Baiju's forces in 1242–3, when the Sultan's army was crushed and the Seljük state, hitherto one of the great powers of the region, was reduced to a client principality and subjected to a heavy annual tribute.Footnote 61

Clearly the Mongol advance into Eastern Europe and the Near East, for all the trials it inflicted on the populations at large, also opened up welcome opportunities for resourceful déracinés. We cannot discount the possibility that Peter too had found employment with the Mongols. There is no more information regarding his fate after the Lyons Council than there is about his activities before he arrived. We do not know whether he even remained in Western Europe. Was he genuinely an exile from his homeland, or was he, rather, a temporary visitor to the West, fulfilling a particular errand on the conquerors’ behalf?

If the latter, then his mission proved highly effective. Peter's interrogation by the Pope and Cardinals had at least two notable consequences. One, as we saw, was to reinforce the impression, already widespread within Western Europe, that the invaders were the harbingers of the Last Things as foretold by Pseudo-Methodius. The second consequence was still more momentous: namely, the despatch of three separate diplomatic missions to the Mongol world in March 1245, several weeks prior to the Council of Lyons. These embassies even headed for the three distinct regions in which Peter had claimed that Mongol forces were operating.Footnote 62

Innocent IV had ascended the throne of St. Peter in June 1243. He was clearly exercised about the Mongol threat, since he wrote to the Patriarch of Aquileia as early as August, with instructions to preach the crusade in Germany against the Mongols and to offer all those who took the Cross in Hungary the same rewards as were conferred on crusaders to the Holy Land.Footnote 63 In these circumstances, it is somewhat puzzling that the new Pope refrained for almost two years from sending out agents to reconnoitre and bring back information on the newcomers. By far the most likely explanation is that Peter's assurances in the latter half of 1244 regarding the Mongols’ treatment of ambassadors convinced Innocent for the first time that it was safe to do soFootnote 64 – that they observed diplomatic etiquette and that his representatives would not merely be butchered like the inhabitants of Poland, Moravia and Hungary. This is not to deny that once the Pope had decided to make contact with them he found in Peter's testimony a useful means of securing the Council's retrospective support for his policy.Footnote 65

I drew attention above to the way in which the Mongols interpreted embassies from independent powers. The mere presence of a ruler's envoys represented the first stage in the process of his submission. Here the Mongols’ distinctive understanding of the term ‘peace’ was pivotal. As a consequence, when Carpini, entering their territory in February 1246, spoke of Innocent's wish that “all Christians should be friends of the Mongols and should have peace with them” and, moreover, that “they should be great before God in Heaven”, and brought a letter from Innocent asking them to “engage in fruitful discourse. . . .especially on those matters that pertain to peace”, he was telling his hosts exactly what they wanted – and perhaps now expected – to hear.Footnote 66

Footnotes

1

An abridged version of this study formed part of a paper, “Some earlyWestern sources on the Mongol advance”, delivered at the Summer School“New Directions in the Study of the Mongol Empire” at the Institutefor Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 3 July2014. I am grateful for the comments it elicited there, and hope thatmy good friend David Morgan, who was in the audience, will bear withbeing confronted by it a second time.

2 On the invasion of Eastern Europe and the three papal embassies, see Morgan, David, The Mongols, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2007), pp. 120–125 , 156-158; de Rachewiltz, Igor, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (London, 1971), pp. 76–118 ; Jackson, Peter, The Mongols and the West, 1221-1410 (Harlow, 2005), pp. 58–74 , 87-97.

3 Denis Sinor, “Le rapport du dominicain Julien écrit en 1238 sur le péril mongol”, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes-rendus (2002), pp. 1153-1168. For the text of the Epistula, see Heinrich Dörrie, “Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen: Die Missionsreisen des fr. Iulianus O.P. ins Ural-Gebiet (1234/5) und nach Rußland und der Bericht des Erzbischofs Peter über die Tartaren”, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse (1956), no. 6, pp. 125-202 (at pp. 162-182).

4 Claverie, Pierre-Vincent, “Deux lettres inédites de la première mission en Orient d'André de Longjumeau (1246)”, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 158 (2000), pp. 283–292 . For Simeon's letter to Pope Innocent, which had been known of for some time, see Acta Innocentii PP. IV (1243-1254), (ed.) Theodosius T. Haluščynskyj and Meletius M. Wojnar, Pontificia Commissio ad redigendum Codicem Iuris Canonici Orientalis, Fontes, 3rd series, IV, part 1 (Rome, 1962), pp. 95-97 (no. 52).

5 Guzman, Gregory G., “The Vinland Map controversy and the discovery of a second version of the Tartar Relation: The authenticity of the 1339 text”, Terrae Incognitae 38 (2006), pp. 19–25 . The ‘Tartar Relation’ was first published by Skelton, R.A., Marston, Thomas E. and Painter, George D. in The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven and London, 1965). For a better text, see Hystoria Tartarorum C. de Bridia monachi, (ed.) Alf Önnerfors, Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen und Übungen 186 (Berlin, 1967). A revised version of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation followed in 1995.

6 I am most grateful to Timothy Bolton, of Sotheby's, for sending me the schedule of contents of this ms. and for allowing me to inspect the relevant pages at length prior to the auction sale in December 2008.

7 For a description of the ms. and its contents, see Bolton, Timothy, “A newly emergent mediaeval manuscript containing Encomium Emmae Reginae with the only known complete text of the recension prepared for King Edward the Confessor”, Mediaeval Scandinavia 19 (2009), pp. 205–221 (here pp. 205-211). I am indebted to the author for kindly sending me an offprint.

8 The fullest treatment of Peter is to be found in Bezzola, Gian Andri, Die Mongolen in abendländischer Sicht (1220-1270): Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (Bern and Munich, 1974), pp. 113–118 . See also Klopprogge, Axel, Ursprung und Ausprägung des abendländischen Mongolenbildes im 13. Jahrhundert. Ein Versuch zur Ideengeschichte des Mittelalters, Asiatische Forschungen 122 (Wiesbaden, 1993), pp. 174–176 .

9 Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, pp. 182-194. For the two versions he used, see Pauli, R., “Ex annalibus Burtonensibus”, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, XXVII (Hannover, 1885), pp. 474-475; and Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, (ed.) Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 57, 7 vols (London, 1872-1883), IV, pp. 386-389. Here I shall cite the original edition: “Annales monasterii de Burton, 1004-1263”, in Annales Monastici, (ed.) Luard, Rolls Series 36, 5 vols (London, 1864-9), I, pp. 271-275.

10 To take the most notable example, several lines on ‘Salbatin’, the ruler of the great city of ‘Ornac’, whom the Tartars had attacked and killed, are missing at p. 189, though correctly given by Pauli (“Ex annalibus”, p. 474) and by Luard (“Annales monasterii de Burton”, p. 272): the elision is evidently due to homoeoteleuton, since the obscure name Salbatin/Sabatin both immediately precedes the omitted passage and concludes it.

11 James, Montague Rhodes, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1907–8), I, pp. 186-187. Thanks are due to the College Librarian for furnishing me with a digitised copy of the relevant folios and to the Master and Fellows for permission to cite from it.

12 Ruotsala, Antti, Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: Encountering the Other (Helsinki, 2001), pp. 153–155 (appendix 1), citing the folio number of the ms. as 261vb in error. The fullest description is in H.V. Shooner (ed.), Codices manuscripti operum Thomae de Aquino, II. Bibliothecae Gdańsk-Münster (Rome, 1973), pp. 224-225. I am grateful to Dr Rudolf Lindpointner, of the Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek, for providing me some years ago with a digitised image of the relevant folio.

13 E.g. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, IV, pp. 387, where he inserts the word abominabiles to reinforce the distasteful notion that the newcomers ate anything forbidden, and 388, where he numbers blood among their beverages, and adds, as an alternative explanation of their origins, their link with the island of Tarachonta, a detail borrowed from the account of Gog and Magog by the 8th-century geographer Aethicus Ister; for other references to Tarachonta as the Mongols’ original home, see IV, p. 109, n. 2, and VI, p. 497, n. 1. For Aethicus’ own testimony, cf. Die Kosmographie des Aethicus, (ed.) Otto Prinz, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 14 (Munich, 1993), pp. 120-121.

14 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, VI, pp. 75-76 (the marginal date, 10 April 1242, supplied by Luard is of no value). “Annales de Waverleia”, in Annales Monastici, (ed.) Luard, II, pp. 324-325. Bezzola, Die Mongolen, p. 54 and n. 198, dated it persuasively to 1239-40; see further Klopprogge, Ursprung, p. 163.

15 Davidsohn, Robert, “Ein Briefkodex des dreizehnten und ein Urkundenbuch des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts”, Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 19 (1927), pp. 373–388 (here pp. 383-384: no. 27).

16 Richard, Jean, “Une lettre concernant l'invasion mongole?”, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 119 (1961), pp. 243–245 . Claverie, Pierre-Vincent, “L'apparition des Mongols sur la scène politique occidentale (1220-1223)”, Le Moyen Age 105 (1999), pp. 601–613 (here pp. 612-613).

17 Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, p. 153.

18 See Richard, Jean, La papauté et les missions d'Orient au Moyen Age (XIIe-XVe siècles) (Rome, 1977), p. 67 , n. 10.

19 Podskalsky, Gerhard, Christentum und theologische Literatur in der Kiever Rus’ (988-1237) (Munich, 1982), p. 299 ; Podskal´ski, Gerkhard, Khristianstvo i bogoslovskaia literatura v kievskoi Rusi (988-1237 gg.), 2nd edn., translated by Nazarenko, A.V. and (ed). Akent´eva, K.K., Subsidia Byzantinorossica 1 (St Petersburg, 1996), p. 467 . Other literature is cited in Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, p. 153.

20 Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, p. 154. On the bishopric of Belgorod, see Fennell, John, A History of the Russian Church to 1448 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 43 , 52.

21 See Sackur, Ernst (ed.), Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen. Pseudomethodius, Adso und die Tiburtinische Sibylle (Halle, 1898 ), new edn by Raoul Manselli (Torino, 1963), pp. 67-69, 80-91.

22 Cross, Samuel H., “The earliest allusion in Slavic literature to the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius”, Speculum 4 (1929), pp. 329–339 (here pp. 332-335). Chekin, Leonid S., “The Godless Ishmaelites: The image of the steppe in eleventh-thirteenth-century Rus΄”, Russian History 19 (1992), pp. 9–28 (here pp. 12-17).

23 Bezzola, Die Mongolen, pp. 41-43. Chekin, “Godless Ishmaelites”, pp. 20-23.

24 Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, p. 167.

25 Klopprogge, Ursprung, p. 160, rejecting the exegesis supplied by Bezzola, Die Mongolen, pp. 42-43 (where ‘Ishmaelites’ is understood to denote the ‘Mo'al’, i.e. the Mongols).

26 Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, p. 181. It would, of course, be loading too great a burden on our evidence were we to identify this anonymous cleric with Peter himself; Dörrie, p. 183, merely alludes to the possibility.

27 Thomas of Spalato, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatensium pontificum, (ed.) Olga Perić and translated by , Damir Karbić, Sokol, Mirjana Matijević and Sweeney, James Ross, Archdeacon Thomas of Split. History of the Bishops of Salona and Split (Budapest and New York, 2006), Latin text, p. 286 (English translation, p. 287). For further evidence, see Jackson, Mongols and the West, pp. 144-146.

28 Much of this was first pointed out by Bigalli, Davide, I Tartari e l'Apocalisse. Ricerche sull'escatologia in Adamo Marsh e Ruggero Bacone (Firenze, 1971), pp. 64–68 . It was subsequently developed further by Klopprogge, Ursprung, pp. 175-176, who corrected Dörrie's identification of ‘Etrev’ with the River Irtysh.

29 Cf. Julian's ‘Hornach’, the residence of an unnamed Sultan: Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, 169-171. Ürgench appears as ‘Ornach’ in Rus´ sources also: Egorov, V. L., Istorischeskaia geografiia Zolotoi Ordy v XIII-XIV vv. (Moscow, 1985), p. 126 .

30 Bezzola, Die Mongolen, pp. 124-149. Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden. Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 16 (Sigmaringen, 1994), p. 199, n. 8.

31 John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus, v, 13, 33, and ix, 38, 49, (ed.) Enrico Menestò, Maria Cristiana Lungarotti and Paolo Daffinà, Giovanni di Pian di Carpine. Storia dei Mongoli (Spoleto, 1989), pp. 259, 274, 324, 330-332, and translation in Christopher Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission. Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London and New York, 1955), pp. 23, 31, 66, 70-71. See Guzman, Gregory G., “European captives and craftsmen among the Mongols, 1231-1255”, The Historian 72 (2010), pp. 122–150 ; and Jackson, Peter, “Franciscans as papal and royal envoys to the Tartars, 1245-1255”, in Robson, Michael J. P. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 224–239 (here pp. 234-235).

32 Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, p. 154.

33 Klopprogge, Ursprung, pp. 52, 174.

34 Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmi‛ al-tawārīkh, (ed.) Muḥammad Rawshan and Muṣṭafā Mūsawī, 4 vols (Tehran, 1373 Hijrī solar/1994), I, pp. 301-305; translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Classical Writings of the Medieval Islamic World. Persian Histories of the Mongol Dynasties, III. Jami'u’t-Tawarikh: A Compendium of Chronicles by Rashiduddin Fazlullah (London and New York, 2012), pp. 105-106. See the paper by Anne Broadbridge in this Festschrift.

35 For instance, the unnamed daughter offered to Terge El of the Qonggirad tribe, whom Chinggis Khan executed for rejecting her in insulting terms, and Chabun, who married Deregei Küregen of the Ikires tribe: Rashīd al-Dīn, I, pp. 159, 164 (translated Thackston, pp. 60, 62).

36 ‛Alā’ al-Dīn ‛Aṭā Malik Juwaynī, Tārīkh-i Jahān-gushā, (ed.) Mīrzā Muḥammad Qazwīnī, Gibb Memorial Series, n.s., XVI, 3 vols (Leiden and London, 1912-37), I, p. 80; translated by Boyle, John Andrew, The History of the World-Conqueror, 2 vols (Manchester, 1958 ; reprint in 1 vol. with introduction by David Morgan, 1997), p. 103.

37 Minhāj-i Sirāj Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī (c. 1260), (ed.) ‛Abd al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī, 2nd edn., 2 vols (Kabul, 1342-3 solar/1963-4), I, p. 317; translated by H.G. Raverty, Ṭabaḳāt-i Nāṣirī. A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, Bibliotheca Indica, 2 vols (Calcutta, 1873-81), p. 297 (TWRBY in the Persian script, though Raverty consistently renders the name “Tūrtī”. Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-ta' rīkh, translated by D. S. Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period, III (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2008), p. 253.) Jackson, Peter, “Jalāl al-Dīn, the Mongols and the Khwarazmian conquest of the Panjāb and Sind”, Iran (Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies) 28 (1990), pp. 45–54 (here p. 50); repr. in Jackson, Studies on the Mongol Empire and Early Muslim India, Variorum Collected Studies series (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2009), no. X (here p. 17).

38 I. P. Petrushevskii, “Pokhod mongol´skikh voisk v sredniuiu Aziiu v 1219-1224 gg. i ego posledstviia”, in S. L. Tikhvinskii (ed.), Tataro-Mongoly v Azii i Evrope, 2nd edn. (Moscow, 1977), pp. 107-139 (here pp. 112-114). On Mongol espionage generally, see May, Timothy, The Mongol Art of War. Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Barnsley, 2007), pp. 69–71 .

39 Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, pp. 182-183.

40 Bezzola, Die Mongolen, pp. 113, 116-117.

41 § 2: Hystoria Tartarorum C. de Bridia monachi, ed. Önnerfors, p. 4, unde et Tartari appellant apostolicum magnum papam per totum occidentem; Skelton, Marston and Painter, Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, 2nd edn., p. 55 (Painter's trans., p. 54, does not seem to me to represent the sense adequately). For the Qaghan Güyük's reply (in Persian) to Innocent IV, see Paul Pelliot, “Les Mongols et la papauté”, part 1, Revue de l'Orient Chrétien 23 (1922-3), pp. 3-30: transcription at p. 17 (line 4: bābā-yi kalān), French trans. at p. 18 (and n.3); also the English trans. (by J. A. Boyle) in De Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, appendix, p. 213.

42 Meyvaert, Paul, “An unknown letter of Hulagu, Il-khan of Persia, to King Louis IX of France”, Viator 11 (1980), pp. 245–259 (relevant text at p. 258). Morgan, Mongols, 2nd edn, pp. 159-160.

43 Simon de Saint-Quentin, Historia Tartarorum, (ed.) Jean Richard, Simon de Saint-Quentin. Histoire des Tartares, Documents relatifs à l'histoire des Croisades 8 (Paris, 1965), p. 105.

44 Ricardo di San Germano, “Chronica”, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new edn., (ed.) C. Garufi (Bologna, 1934- in progress), VII, part 2, pp. 110a-111a (the ‘Chronica Priora’, from the Bologna ms. A. 144): the context is the attack on the Rus´ and the Polovtsy in 1223.

45 Davidsohn, pp. 383-384. Ms. C, 317b-318b.

46 For the image, see Carpini, iii, 3-5, (ed.) Menestò et al., pp. 237-238 (translation in Dawson, Mongol Mission, pp. 9-10); and for ultimatums, Voegelin, Eric, “The Mongol orders of submission to European powers, 1245-1255”, Byzantion 15 (1940-1), pp. 378–413 , and de Rachewiltz, Igor, “Some remarks on the ideological foundations of Chingis Khan's empire”, Papers on Far Eastern History 7 (1973), pp. 21–36 .

47 Interestingly, Julian also had spoken of three distinct Mongol armies (Dörrie, “Drei Texte”, p. 175), as would the author of the ‘Tartar Relation’ subsequently (Hystoria Tartarorum C. de Bridia monachi, § 11, (ed.) Önnerfors, pp. 8-9).

48 Davidsohn, p. 384. Ms. C, 318b.

49 Rossabi, Morris, Khubilai Khan. His Life and Times (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), pp. 102–103 , 207-213, 219-220. Wright, David Curtis, “Navies in the Mongol Yuan conquest of Southern Song China, 1274-1279”, Mongolian Studies 29 (2007), pp. 207–216 . Morgan, Mongols, 2nd edn, pp. 106-107.

50 Simon de Saint-Quentin, Historia Tartarorum, (ed.) Richard, p. 98. See more generally Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and the faith of the conquered”, in Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (eds.), Mongols, Turks and Others. Eurasian Nomads and the Outside World (Leiden and Boston, 2005), pp. 245-290 (here pp. 249-252); reprinted in Jackson, Studies on the Mongol Empire and Early Muslim India, Variorum Collected Studies series (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2009), no. IV (here pp. 4-8); also Mongols and the West, pp. 48-49.

51 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, IV, p. 276. Richard, Jean, “Ultimatums mongols et lettres apocryphes”, Central Asiatic Journal 17 (1973), pp. 212–222 (here p. 215); reprinted in Richard, Orient et Occident au moyen âge: Contacts et relations (XIIe-XVe s.), Variorum Collected Studies series (London, 1976), no. XXVIII.

52 Mostaert, Antoine and Cleaves, Francis Woodman, “Trois documents mongols des archives secrètes vaticanes”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 15 (1952), pp. 419–506 (here pp. 485, 492-493). Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, pp. 106-108. Jackson, Mongols and the West, p. 46.

53 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, IV, p. 386: consilium et auxilium et de sua tribulatione consolationem adepturus, si sibi dante Deo ecclesia romana et principum clemens forte gratia subveniret.

54 See James Ross Sweeney, “‘Spurred on by the Fear of Death’: Refugees and displaced populations during the Mongol invasion of Hungary”, in Michael Gervers and Wayne Schlepp (eds.), Nomadic Diplomacy, Destruction and Religion from the Pacific to the Adriatic, Toronto Studies in Central and Inner Asia 1 (Toronto, 1994), pp. 34-62.

55 Myself included: Mongols and the West, p. 87.

56 On Chinggis Khan's ‘religious policy’, see Ratchnevsky, Paul, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, translated (and ed.) by Haining, Thomas Nivison (Oxford, 1991), pp. 197–198 ; for the status of the religious classes in the 13th-century empire, Jackson, “Mongols and the faith of the Conquered”, pp. 262-268 (reprint in Jackson, Studies, no. IV, pp. 18-23).

57 Fuhrmann, Joseph T., “Metropolitan Cyril II (1242-1281) and the politics of accommodation”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24 (1976), pp. 161–172 . See also Fennell, History of the Russian Church, pp. 198-199.

58 Allsen, Thomas T., Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge, 2001), deals with this theme in great depth.

59 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, IV, pp. 274-276. On the Mongols’ need for interpreters in significant numbers, see Sinor, Denis, “Interpreters in medieval Inner Asia”, Asian and African Studies 16 (1982), pp. 293–320 (here pp. 307-316), and repr. in Sinor, Studies in Medieval Inner Asia, Variorum Collected Studies series (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT, 1997), no. XV; Thomas T. Allsen, “The Rasûlid Hexaglot in its Eurasian cultural context”, in Peter B. Golden (ed.), The King's Dictionary. The Rasûlid Hexaglot (Leiden, Boston and Köln, 2000), pp. 29-38 passim.

60 For references, see Peter Jackson, “World-conquest and local accommodation: Threat and blandishment in Mongol diplomacy”, in Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh A. Quinn ((eds.) with Ernest Tucker), History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (Wiesbaden, 2006), pp. 3-22 (here p. 17), and repr. in Jackson, Studies, no. V.

61 Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey. The Seljukid Sultanate of Rūm: Eleventh to fourteenth century, translated (and ed.) by Peter Holt (Harlow, 2001), pp. 70-71.

62 “Annales monasterii de Burton”, p. 273. Jackson, “Franciscans as papal and royal envoys”, p. 225.

63 Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis Pontificum Romanorum selectae, (ed.) Carl Rodenberg, 3 vols (Berlin, 1883-94), II, pp. 3-4 (no. 2); this letter is also printed in Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, (ed.) Augustin Theiner, 2 vols (Rome, 1859-60), I, pp. 187-188 (no. 348).

64 This was the conclusion, for instance, of De Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, p. 86, of Klopprogge, Ursprung, p. 193, and of Schmieder, Europa, p. 76.

65 Bezzola, Die Mongolen, p. 118. Klopprogge, Ursprung, p. 193: “Der Papst selbst hatte wohl den Auftritt des russischen Informanten auf dem Konzil inszeniert.” Schmieder, Europa, p. 78, n. 20.

66 See Carpini, ix, 8, (ed.) Menestò et al., p. 306: placebat eidem quod Christiani omnes Tartarorum essent amici et pacem haberent cum eis; insuper quod desiderabat quod essent magni apud Deum in celo (translated in Dawson, Mongol Mission, p. 53). For Innocent's letter, Cum non solum, see Acta Innocentii PP. IV, ed. Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, p. 31 (no. 17): specialiter de iis quae ad pacem pertinent tractatum fructuosum habentes (tr. in Dawson, Mongol Mission, p. 76). Jackson, Mongols and the West, pp. 89-90.

1 An abridged version of this study formed part of a paper, “Some early Western sources on the Mongol advance”, delivered at the Summer School “New Directions in the Study of the Mongol Empire” at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 3 July 2014. I am grateful for the comments it elicited there, and hope that my good friend David Morgan, who was in the audience, will bear with being confronted by it a second time.